A couple weeks ago I was invited to be an extra in Public Enemies, a new movie starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale and directed by Michael Mann. As you can probably guess I had quite an experience, which I’ve detailed all at The Daily Page.

Click here to read: On set at Public Enemies with Michael Mann and Johnny Depp in Wisconsin

Everyone knows Superman was originally created by two men – Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster – whose creation first appeared in Action Comics #1. As of last week, a judge ruled that the heirs of Jerry Siegel were to receive half the copyright of that material back. What does this mean exactly? Well, if I had to distill the story down into only two wildly oversimplified bulletpoints, then know this – DC may have just lost half the profits they make (and have made since 1999) off of Superman, and they may lose the remaining half of the copyright entirely to the Shuster estate in 5 years.

Now, things aren’t really as cut and dry as that – as in any legal case, there’s a lot of room for interpretation. And expect DC/Warner to make more than a couple appeal attempts as well.

But for now…
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Last weekend, many poweteers attended the ever exciting Anime Boston convention. (and subsequently became engrossed in the massive line waits for registration and pre-registration alike, but that’s neither here nor there) After the convention having come and gone, to keep my little brain from going into withdrawal after being thrown back into the mediocrity that is normal everyday life, I began thinking of just exactly what life lessons anime and manga have passed on to geeks like myself. (and are sometimes taken way too much to heart by more “enthused” geeks of the genre, in which case they should be put out of our misery)

So of course, I had to write a compilation of such thoughts, and share with the world. Slight spoilers for some series.

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	Subscribe to iTunes POWETcast  Choose your own reader Episode 1 – Fit the First (direct link)

Welcome to Powet.TV’s first audio netcast!

Part of the Powet Presents series, this weekly netcast will include all six episodes (called “fits”) of the Primary Phase of the BBC Radio version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, produced by Not Them Productions. At the top of every episode, we talk to the show’s producers, audio talent, and/or voice actors about the challenges and stories relating to this fan production. The discussion also includes explanations of the differences BBC Radio show and other versions of this story — including five novels, a TV miniseries, and a Disney feature film — as well as the changes the Not Them producers made to the radio scripts in order to keep them more in line with these versions.

But enough about that. Enjoy Episode 1 – Fit the First!,  check out our iTunes store, or  subscribe to our netcast feed in your favorite reader! And be sure to come back here and tell us what you thought!

Show notes:

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Saturday morning cartoons are a staple of every child’s life. Nearly every good (and even some not-so-good) Saturday morning animated feature had a video game tie-in to go along with it. Along with kid-favorites such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers, there were also shows such as Exo-Squad and Gargoyles which, while they were still intended for children, contained themes which were more complex than what one would find on shows like Pokemon. Phantom 2040, which debuted in the mid 90s, was one of the shows in the latter category. It told the story of Kit Walker, who was the 24th Phantom. In the distant future, he was charged with saving the city of Metropia from collapse. It was bought to an end after only 2 seasons, mostly due to it’s themes of environmentalism, corporate greed, and social structure going over viewer’s heads. This was especially unfortunate considering that the show had a lot going for it. It had a stylish art style (thanks to Aeon Flux creator Peter Chung), solid writing, and a vocal cast featuring the likes of Mark Hamil, Margot Kider, and Deborah Harry to name a few. Most impressive of all, it featured a 16-bit era video game tie-in that didn’t suck. This was indeed impressive, especially given the dismal track record of 16-bit games based on existing intellectual properties back then.

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After a long series of delays and setbacks, the Four Horsemen have given us a long awaited updated on the status of the Exclusives from last year.

To bring everyone up to speed, the first factory gave everyone the run around trying to avoid being shut down. Eventually, they were closed their doors and neglected to let 4H in on the situation. Fortunately, with a little intervention from some friends over at NECA, the molds were salvaged and a new factory was hired. That is a very short description of what happened over a very long period of time. The figures were produced at the new factory and pre-production samples looked very very promising. The large shipment of figures was scheduled to be shipped March 20th, 2008. They are hopeful that they will be in with enough time to bring them to NYCC to sell at the booth the Four Horsemen will be sharing with Action Figure Express. Eric Treadaway mentioned that due to some order cancellations that there would be a good opportunity for singles and sets of the whole Anitherian Nine lineup available, though, he was not specific on details.

You can read it all here or look after the jump for the original text. The link also has some pictures the factory sent the 4H of Ramathor in production.

We’ve been following this series of figures for a while now:
Ramathor revealed
Variants Revealed 1
Variants Revealed 2
Variants Revealed 3
Variants Revealed 4
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Wii gamers who haven’t added a 360 or PS3 to their console cabinet can rejoice that Rock Band, the best reason to own a next gen console, is making its way to waggle town.
Good News: Its coming June 22 in the US for $169.99 Full press release follows after the jump.
Bad News: No song downloads. And no online play. All the friend codes in the world won’t help you now.
Worse News: Europe still has no release date for any system.
Strong bets are the Wii version is a port of the PS2 release, which also excluded the character customization. Harmonix insist it isn’t an idea they’ve given up on, but they’re hampered by Nintendo’s shortcomings in this arena.
There is only one way to save Rock Band on Wii, and thats to make all the in game characters into Miis. Yes, its no replacement for the online functionality that makes the game the sure hit, but it would at least play well to the Wii Sports audience. Also it wouldn’t hurt to ship the game in stereo sound, unlike Guitar Hero III.

From Kotaku: Harmonix: No DLC for Rock Band Wii…Yet

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Sega is guilty of not caring after its favorite son, Sonic. In fact the best game with Sonic in it in the last 5 years is probably Super Smash Bros Brawl, made by Nintendo.
The above video is not officially released by Sega, but accompanies the alleged Sonic Unleashed screenshots. It looks official enough to me, probably just waiting to be revealed at a press conference or by a magazine/site exclusive.
Whatever Sonic Unleashed is, it needs to be good. The GameBoy Advance and DS Sonic games have done well rehashing classic Genesis gameplay, but do little to advance the franchise. Sonic Unleashed is supposedly for Xbox 360 and PS3 and could be somewhat similar to last year’s Wii Sonic game (which wasn’t met with great reception, but wasn’t really bad either)